Motion Animations

Aside from using Motion for animated lyrics, I wanted to experiment turning still images into animated ones. A shot we thought this would work is the one where our performer is looking at a picture of her ex boyfriend. This clip is framed using the rule of thirds and is to the far right of the shot (see below).

To follow conventions of indie-pop, I decided to work with girly shapes and used a star, arrows and hearts.

Once I had found the images I wanted I could then add them into motion. As I was using Motion on a MacBook and our music video has been edited on an iMac, my co-director sent me a screenshot of the clip we were using the animation for so I could ensure the animated images were in the right place when creating them in Motion.  I will then remove the screenshot so the background for all the animations is transparent and can be 'greenscreened' onto the clip.

Experimenting With Motion

After experimenting with VideoScribe, my co-director and I found another peice of text software called 'Motion'. This software allows much more animation with text, which gives us the freedom to put our preferred lyrics in whatever formation we so wish.

We're going to replicate Cher Lloyd's 'Swagger Jagger' video as we used her animated lyrics as inspiration for ours. To do this we downloaded the music video from YouTube and saved it as an mp4. We then imported this into iMovie and cut the video down so we only have the clip of the animated lyrics 'shoutin' at me'.

Once we saved this clip, we imported it into Motion so we could 'trace' the movements of the 'swagger jagger' lyrics for our lyrics. 

The lyrics we want to use are 'to being along again' and we want the words to appear on each beat. 

We are going to continue working with Motion to achieve the clip we have envisaged. Once we have got the shot we want, we will save the clip as an mp4 and upload it to our music video. 

VideoScribe

My co-director and I found a software called 'VideoScribe'. This allows you to input any text onto any background yet have a hand holding a pen, and letters appear one by one, as if it has been handwritten. We are going to play around with this software and see if it would work in our music video.

Below are our favourite fonts we picked out to experiment with:

Lyrics in Music Videos

I have researched and watched numerous pop music videos and it seems as though it is quite common for the song's lrics to appear in the video at some point. Whether it be appearing on the screen or the artist interacting with the lyrics.

For example, Cher Lloyd's 'Swagger Jagger' video has the lyrics popping up in different animated ways. A lot of the time these lyrics appear on the beat of the song. She also interacts with some of them too e.g. pushing the line 'get out of my way' to the left and the words leave the shot as if she had actually pushed them.

My co-director and I want to find a software that'll allow us to do similar animations of the lyrics in our music video so it follows conventions of similar music videos. 

Editing 11/4/16

As it is the Easter holidays, my co director and I met up for an editing session at my house to edit the footage we shot on 4/4/16. Watching the footage back revealed some good shots we had taken and below is our favourite.

We are unsure what colour background we should have but we like the last clip being black and white against a bright background. These drum shots turned out exactly how we envisaged them to!

I have saved these clips as an mp4 clip so we can transfer it to school.

The Making of a Music Video

Below is a video made by our media teacher showing us filming some of our music video (4/4/16).

Filming 4/4/16

Today my co-director and I filmed some more shots for the music video. We filmed the shot of our performer crying over her ex boyfriend whilst eating ice cream in her pyjamas, close up of her putting her slippers on, ripping the head off of a 'be mine' teddy bear, angrily scrolling through pictures of her ex boyfriend with other girls and her beating a drum thats covered in confetti. The shoot was successful and we shot the clips we needed.

Crying Shot

We dressed Imogen in pyjamas and sat her on the ground with screwed up tissues as if they had been used.

We dropped eye drops into her eyes to make sure her eye make up ran down her face. 

We asked her to pretend to cry dramatically whilst eating ice cream.


Teddy Bear Shot

As it was too difficult to rip the head off, I had to cut some of the stitching so it was easier for Imogen to rip off. I unstitched the side of the head so it couldn't be seen.

Drum Shot

For this shot we used a drum from the drum kit at school and poured confetti on it so when Imogen hit the drum the confetti would bounce. We hope to edit this shot with a black and white filter and slowed down.

All in all, the day was very successful and we took all the shots we needed. We learnt from past filming days to leave the camera rolling between shots so we could get some natural laughing and dancing shots.